This unusual recipe from the 1936 National Mark Calendar of Cooking does really sound very good! It isn’t unusual in what the ingredients are… pastry, black currants, lemon, almonds, if you have the currants then probably everything else is in the cupboard, but it is the combination, the mixing of flavours:

Black currant and almond paste tart

1 beaten egg

6 oz castor sugar

½ lb ground almonds

6 oz icing sugar

1 lemon

vanilla or ratafia essence

or shop bought marzipan

1 lb black currants

arrowroot

sugar

to make the almond paste – mix the two sugars and the almonds, make into a smooth paste by adding the lemon juice and essences, kneading well and add as much of the egg as required

make a flan case with the almond paste

stew the currants with a little sugar very briefly, then bind the syrup with the arrowroot

fill the flan case with the fruit then bake “for a few minutes only”

Eat it cold, with some kind of plain cake or biscuit; sponge fingers would be excellent!

3 thoughts on “Quite unusual and very good indeed!”

I think I would adjust the recipe and make it more like a Bakewell tart with the black currants – I think they would go so well with marzipan! – spell check offered me Bakerlite instead of Bakewell, not the same sort of thing at all!